Project Leaders

Recomposing the City is co-directed by Gascia Ouzounian (Music, University of Oxford) and Sarah Lappin (Architecture, Queen's University Belfast). Gascia and Sarah first collaborated in leading an intensive, week-long 'live project', Belfast Sound Works, for Architecture MArch and BSc students at Queen's in 2013. Following this they established a research group at the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities at Queen's. This group brought together over twenty internal and external researchers from a variety of disciplines in examining the relationship of sound art to the city.

Gascia and Sarah now lead a number of initiatives under the Recomposing the City rubric, including the three-year AHRC-funded project 'Hearing Trouble'. They have undertaken cross-faculty teaching and research initiatives, including the Soundspace Seminar Series and two international symposia.

BIOGRAPHIES

Dr. Sarah Lappin (BA Columbia, MArch Princeton, PhD University of Ulster, RIBA) is an architect who teaches theory and design at Queens University Belfast. She is co-founder of the All-Ireland Architectural Research Group, and is the current Chair of the Steering Group of the Architectural Humanities Research Association. Dr. Lappin's research interests include architecture and identity and twentieth century architectural history. Her book Full Irish: New Architecture in Ireland (Princeton Architectural Press) was published in 2009.

Dr Gascia Ouzounian (BMus and MMus, McGill, PhD UC San Diego) is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford. Her writing on sound art, experimental music and new technologies appears in journals including Leonardo Music Journal, Organised Sound, Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review, and many others. Her current book project explores the history of acoustic and auditory spatiality since the early 1800s in a number of contexts: stereophonic and binaural technologies, the science of spatial hearing, wartime listening devices, multichannel electroacoustic music, sound installation art and sound mapping.

PLACE

PLACE is the Built Environment Centre for Northern Ireland. It provide leadership on design in Northern Ireland, enabling communities to make informed and engaged decisions about place-making and helping them articulate and realise their ambitions for their areas.

PLACE activates communities and the wider public in Northern Ireland by increasing understanding and engagement with architecture, planning, landscape and the environment.

At Ryerson, Recomposing the City will host a design lab in Summer 2014. This programme will bring together an international group of sound artists and architects who will collaboratively create design proposals for development projects in the City of Toronto. These proposals will be exhibited and discussed in public forums, with view to generating new debates in architecture, urban planning and development.

We are grateful to Professor Colin Ripley, Chair of the Department of Architectural Science at Ryerson University, and pianist Eve Egoyan for their support of this project.

Sonic Arts Research Centre

The Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen's University Belfast is a unique interdisciplinary facility which unites internationally recognised experts in the fields of musical composition, signal processing, Human Computer Interaction and auditory perception. The Centre is established in a purpose-built facility located alongside the engineering departments of Queen's University Belfast. SARC's centrepiece, the Sonic Laboratory, provides a unique space for cutting-edge initiatives in the creation and delivery of music and audio.

SPACE

The School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering at Queen's University Belfast has a strong international profile in both research and teaching. It brings together three prominent education disciplines areas, Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering, and four internationally recognised interdisciplinary research centres, Architecture and Construction Management, Environmental Engineering Research Centre, Centre for Built Environment Research and the Institute of Spatial and Environmental Planning.